1. National Reading Panel ( NRP) and National Literacy Panel (NLP)

2. National Reading Panel The following generalizations are cited by many authors, usually with the notion that they may also be valid for ESL(ELL) students. Teaching phonemic awareness to children improves their reading more than instruction that does not have a focus on phonemic awareness. Systematic phonics instruction works best for students in kindergarten to grade 6 and for children who have reading difficulties. Older students receiving phonics instruction were better able to decode words and spell words and to read text orally, but their comprehension of text was not significantly improved.

3. Narional Reading Panel Guided repeated oral reading procedures that included guidance from teachers, peers, or parents had a significant and positive impact on word recognition. The Panel found no evidence to suggest that independent silent reading resulted in the improvement of reading. The Panel found that instruction in vocabulary resulted in increases in comprehension. The Panel concluded that teaching a combination of techniques is the most effective way to improve comprehension. It was concluded that to be most effective teachers needed to be taught teaching strategies explicitly.

4. National Literacy Panel a.).... by and large, for language-minority children, word-level components of literacy (e.g., decoding, spelling) either are or can be (with appropriate instruction) at levels equal to those of their monolingual peers. b.)... this is not the case for text-level skills, like reading comprehension, which rarely approach the levels achieved by their monolingual peers. c.) Language-minority students who are literate in their first languages are likely to be advantaged in the acquisition of English literacy. d.)... language-minority students instructed in their native language (primarily Spanish in this report) as well as English, perform on average, better on English reading measures than language- minority students instructed only in their second language (English in this case).

5. Slavin & Cheung (2005) “The most important conclusion from research comparing the relative effects of bilingual and immersion programs for English learners is that there are too few high-quality studies of this question” (Of the 17 studies that fit their qualifications) …. 12 revealed bilingual education resulted in higher scores, while English immersion resulted in no superior performances.

6. Connor, Morrison, Fishman, Schatschneider, & Underwood (2007) “Many children fail to reach proficient levels in reading only because they do not receive the amount and type of instruction they need” (p. 464).

7. Connor, Morrison, Fishman, Schatschneider, & Underwood (2007) “Instructional strategies that help one student may be ineffective when applied to another student with different skills” (p. 464).

8. Connor, Morrison, Fishman, Schatschneider, & Underwood (2007) “…. the impact of any particular instructional strategy appears to depend on children’s language and literacy skills”